Presumably, by cherry-picking images he had collected from Twitter feeds of the many people who attended the event, he was attempting to dismiss the gathering as somehow irrelevant or something, because - as I made an effort to find out at the time - there was quite an impressive turnout.

"Attendance comprised in excess of 250 delegates representing 43 countries in Europe, North and South America, Asia, Africa and Australasia. Our records show that 42 vaping consumers registered to attend."

So, if Chappers would describe over 250 delegates from 43 countries "a small meeting" and therefore a target for ridicule, I wonder what he would make of this?

10.15 am
“A sneeze in one country causes international pneumonia tomorrow”: explaining the plain packaging pandemic

Professor Simon Chapman, Emeritus Professor in the School Public Health, University of Sydney

3.15 pm
Years well spent. A reflection on a professional lifetime spent in public health advocacy

Professor Simon Chapman

Of course, unlike the many images posted on social media confirming big attendances at GFN last year, we have no way of verifying Munafo's estimate because no-one tweeted any pics. So we have to use caution and go by 'public health's' margins of error - that is, the 'crowd' could have been as high as 11 or as low as 9!

By way of comparison, an event at the very same venue in July this year to discuss the question "has regulation of pleasure gone too far?" attracted an audience of around 40, the vast majority of whom were interested medics.

As some wag quite astutely pointed out on Twitter, if environmentalist and advocate for action on climate change Chappers wanted to have a cozy little chat with a few friends and acquaintances in London, perhaps he could have done so on Skype instead of flying halfway around the world to talk to the vanishing few who want to listen to his narcissistic burbling.